Lowell (4/29/2013)hmmm; i'd say there is always files that can be moved or deleted.

files in temp folders on the operating system, log files, , the already suggested moving of backup files, so many other possibilities to address this quickly.

I agree, unfortunately I didn't even get a chance to lay my hand on the server, another engineer in the company, who work at a client site in another country asked for assistance and I am shooting in the dark.

The fellow coworker that asked the question has been quiet since my last suggestion, so I am guessing he was able to manage the sittuation. The last question he asked was if he can delete the LDF file and still be able to reattach the database. I told him he could, but extremely cautious and back it up before delete it permanently. I sent him query to reattach db without LDF file and that was last time I heard from him =)

haiao2000 (4/30/2013)The last question he asked was if he can delete the LDF file and still be able to reattach the database. I told him he could, but extremely cautious and back it up before delete it permanently. I sent him query to reattach db without LDF file and that was last time I heard from him =)

I do hope he had a backup, because if you detach a DB that's got a completely full log file and then delete the transaction log, the chances are better than average that you won't be able to reattach (there wasn't space in the log for SQL to do a clean shut down) and that you'll need to fetch out a database backup and restore it.

That's why the first thing I said in this thread was "Do Not Delete the log file"

sqlnaive (4/29/2013) All the DBs were configured with Full recovery but the backups were were never taken afterwards

Correct me if am wrong. If backup never taken, then db will go into auto-truncate option, even in full recovery model.So it could not be your problem.

Nope. if you are not taking backups then log file will start growing to an extent where you will face disk issue. So once your DB has been set to bulk-logged ot full reovery, you MUST schedule log backups. Auto-truncate does not automatically gets enabled in full recovery. It is the feature in simple recovery model.

I had the same problem few years back, no space in ldf drive. But users were able to logon. We received error only when try to run dml statements.

This was because logging in is not an event that is getting written in log. In case you fire any DML, then there is the data change and that's when there is necessity to write in log file which is showing disk issue.